You never know what can happen when you just ask for it and keep an open mind, i.e., when you’re not attached to any particular outcome.

I called my bank today with some mundane questions about one of my accounts and some interest rates.  For some reason my account wasn’t receiving the posted rate and hadn’t been for quite a while.  So the customer service representative went ahead and said she would credit a small sum to my account! Yes, the bank was actually giving me money.  She didn’t say it was as a gesture of appreciation, or “we’re sorry about that” or even if it was meant somehow to reimburse me for the interest I should have had (which it more than reimburses anyway).  While it wasn’t big enough of an amount to be really meaningful to me, this was the first time the bank ever offered to give me money, so that is quite interesting to me:)

Then another interesting thing happened.  She looked (this is all over the phone) at my chequing account balance and how long I had had an account with the bank (over a decade).  She said that since I was maintaining such a good balance and had been with the bank for so long, that she would increase the deposit amount on my account.  This means that now, if I go to deposit a cheque through the ATM, there won’t be as much of a hold on the funds.  Previously they would only release $200 of any deposit to me immediately and then I’d have to wait another week to get the cheque cleared, etc.  Now that amount is considerably higher!  It’s great.  All these small things help out and decrease some of the stresses of everyday living.

So with one phone call I made some money and secured easier access to more money in the future.  Neither of which were my objectives when I made the call!

The take-away point of all this is to try to keep your head free and clear of expectations and don’t remain attached to a certain outcome or image of the situation. When I spoke with this woman on the phone I was in a fairly detached, distinterested state and not mentally pushing the situation one way or another, even though I was focused and listening closely to what she was saying.  If you stay in this mode, you’ll be less likely to exude frustration, get into an argument or conflict, or fall into disappointment because your expectation or hope wasn’t met.  Also, previous to this phone call I’d been ruminating on how to improve my finances once again.  I think that that meditative state of mind, which was also focused, helped to contribute to this positive outcome.

You may think none of this is any big deal, and that’s ok, but situations like this have happened before to me; I recognize their similarities after the fact, and I’m trying to home in on what the ingredients are for creating them.  One thing is for sure.  It definitely helps to have a higher overall balance and networth in your bank account - you get preferential treatment sometimes.  Just another way that wealth begets more wealth, I think.  This also plays into the idea of like attracting like and bringing into your life that which you focus your energy and attention on.  This could be another key ingredient for creating more life leverage.

This post will be the first part of a series of posts I’m going to write on one very amazing and overlooked book that happens to nicely express my own intuitions on moneyenergy which helped me form the idea for this site. The author is a psychologist, and no doubt explains psychological mechanisms much better than I can, or would even have the patience for!

Warning: This is a really dense book that is not immediately accessible. It doesn’t reach out and grab your salacious imagination of making it big or generating some easy or quick cash. You have to think and work to really follow what this book has to offer. For that reason, it might not be great public transit reading if you need a quiet space for concentration. It’s also a workbook, and full of exercises that you can do - and should do, in order to get the most out of it - but for which you’ll need a notebook and a pen. I confess, I’m fifty pages into it and have not been doing these exercises. I want to go back to do them, however. In fact, I think I had even picked this book up once before and skimmed through it in a bookstore but for some reason still wasn’t ready to buy it at that point (it probably looked too dense and not immediately rewarding). So I made the mistake that I bet others have made: you’ve probably overlooked this book, too.

There’s so much in here, in fact, that I don’t think I could review the book in one post. So I’m just going to do a series and talk about it in bits and pieces. It’s one of those books that is really probably four-books-in-one. To even say that this is a book about the psychology of money is probably a big understatement.

Something that makes this book different from usual books on personal finance or even the psychology of money (stuff like Think and Grow Rich) is the overall context in which the author is working. She draws upon theoretical physics and the tradition of Western philosophy in order to explain her own theory about how we bring money into our lives (and in fact, how we bring anything into our lives). No, it’s not a prototype of The Secret, even though it was written in 1999. It’s not fluffy or wishy-washy. It’s a book for people who like to think and who aren’t full of superficial skepticism.

One idea that Nemeth expounds is that people are conscious conduits of energy (we move energy, in the form of ideas, from the metaphysical realm into the physical realm in the form of actions taken for realizing those ideas). Because of this, whenever you do something that increases your personal power, you’re doing something that can increase your ability to manifest your ideas into physical realities. It’s obvious why and how this can include financial abundance. What is one thing that increases your personal power? Maintaining your integrity. I’ll give you a bit of an excerpt from one of her discussions of personal integrity:

Who you really are, at your core, is compelled to look at areas in which your integrity is not complete. Incompletions pull life’s energy to them. After all, it takes a lot of energy to push down even low-level anxiety or dread. This energy leak only makes it harder to get your goals and dreams with ease. As you connect with and express your genuine values, your true nature, as you become conscious of who you truly are, you can no longer remain in the dark about your self-limiting ways. It becomes almost impossible to avoid taking the actions that will transform your relationship with the energy of money…the Impetus Toward Integrity [is] a phenomenon that can help you identify and seal some of the leaks that drain money’s energy. To see how it works, take a look at the diagram below, a circle with a piece missing. You recognize it as a circle because as humans, we have a strong natural ability to see the whole, even when a part is missing.

Do you notice that your eyes keep returning to the gap in the circle? That’s another part of our wiring. Your eyes are drawn there by the tension of the incompletion… If you keep in mind that your integrity is your own wholeness, it’s easy to understand why once you see it, you also see places where it might need to be patched or filled in. Until you restore that wholeness, you remain in a state of tension…if one of your Standards of Integrity is being trustworthy, every time you don’t follow through on the promises you make to yourself and others, you’ve sprung an energy leak. Until you keep the promise, your attention…is drawn to it, no matter how much you’d like to focus on your goals and dreams (71-72).

The idea here is that in order to get ahead, we need to repair all the gaps between our own personal standards and our actions. Nemeth goes on to discuss how to set proper goals, and one of the criteria for picking and creating proper goals is to make sure that your goals meet all your standards of integrity. Otherwise you won’t and can’t possibly be successful with them. I might say more about this goal-setting in another post, because she’s got lots of gems of insight there, too. But for now, I just want to leave you with the idea that every time we maintain the standards of our own integrity, our personal power (the ability to manifest our ideas into physical reality) grows. It’s about being able to trust ourselves. If you have integrity, it means you can trust yourself. In fact, that might be one interesting way of defining personal integrity: the degree to which you can trust yourself to follow through with the guidelines of your higher (or better) self.

Suggested task: Do you owe anyone any money? Pay them back as soon as possible, or at least start an installment plan. This might apply to credit cards, too. There are many reasons not to pay off debt right away, but this might be another reason why you should. It could help repair your own money integrity and stop up one of those “moneyenergy” leaks.

OK, for a few more posts I’m going to go into further detail on my ideas about moneyenergy: what it is, how to increase it, how to use it. (I’ve almost finished the book on becoming a millionaire before you’re thirty, and I might have something more to say about that, too, in a bit). The basic idea, as previous readers will already know, is that - to quote Dominguez and Robin from their famous book (and who, themselves, were just borrowing from Joseph Campbell’s original insight) - that “money is something you trade your life energy for.” Make no mistake, though, I’m not a simple, dogmatic Your Money or Your Life disciple. I’ve been ingesting some more exciting material since then, too:) (I’ll tell you soon…. maybe you can guess what it is). And I’ve been thinking about this on my own. I’m lucky to know a few people who have been better than I have at putting into practice these principles of what I’m calling “life leverage.”

What is Life Leverage?

I think that I’ve always been attracted to the prospect of increasing cashflow because of what it represents. To me, it’s always been a symbol for life leverage: the ability to increase one’s options for action. We feel alive when we are free - to feel free is at least closely related to feeling alive in the sense of feeling an excitement for living. Recall the last time you were travelling to a new country or location you’d never been to, or the thrill of meeting someone special, or finishing a story or painting of your own creation, or the simple pleasures that come with having an unexpected, free day to spend exactly how you want it, or the thoughts you had after seeing a powerfully moving film, or receiving an unexpected but welcome windfall of money. Maybe a different situation comes to mind to you. I’m guessing you may have felt thrilled and quite inspired. To be inspired, etymologically speaking, is Latin for “having the breath of God inside you.” The Greek equivalent is to have enthusiasm - from entheos, “to be in God.” “God” can refer to however you conceive a higher power or higher intelligence ordering things - whatever turns out to be above beyond the realm of mere human consciousness and human life.

To create life leverage is to access more of this feeling of inspiration and enthusiasm. It is to move closer to that part of you that feels this way or is “in touch” with your own “divine spark” so to speak; the part that leads you to take - as Joe Vitale has said - “inspired action.”

Imagine feeling that way all the time? Of course you’d have your ups and downs, too, but in general the more actions and options that are open to us, I think, is one of the key ingredients for how good we can feel. One of the worst feelings is to “feel stuck” in our lives - we must be in a certain place at a certain time for other people so we can please their clients and customers; or how about the feeling of having absolutely no time or space to oneself? That can really wear down your health after a while. So here are some quick thoughts on how we can better get in touch with or create more of this life leverage. (I’ll be returning to this in other posts again, as I do more thinking about it and hear more of what you think.)

(1) Have a plan. You might not have a huge global plan that you can fit over all parts of your life just yet, but I think it’s probably a good thing if you can at least have a plan running and working within certain aspects of your life, such as finances and investments. Having a plan might help you “keep all your ducks in a row,” so to speak, so that instead of squandering your energy in various places or on various methods, your energy, resources, and money are all lined up and moving in the same direction. This cuts down on drag and resistance to where you need to go.

(2) Work as much as possible from a place of inspired action. I’ve noticed that with the accomplishments I’ve been proud of, and the great people that I have met, that these have all flowed outwards from an original place of inspired action that I once took. For example, deciding to take a certain class “on a whim” because you feel attracted to that topic - and lo and behold, you meet a great friend there, who later introduces you to someone else who teaches you about something else you had been looking for for quite a while. I’m sure you get the idea here. These chains of connections, I’m guessing, tend to happen when we originally move from a place of inspiration. When we’re stuck in our “same old, same old” routines and mindsets we act, think and perceive in the “same old” ways.

(3) Stick to what’s essential. A simplistic way to put this is to call it “focus,” but what focus really means is this. Cut out (or put on hold) the unnecessary parts of your life. Block out distractions (first you need to figure out what the distractions really are). Figure out what 20 percent of your actions are giving you 80 percent of your results. Focus on this 20 percent first and foremost, before moving on to that other 80 percent. I remember starting to put this principle into play when I was in my final year of undergrad (yeah, maybe I should have implemented it sooner). Between applying to grad schools, commuting two hours to teach a course, and taking 6 courses of my own, on top of all the day-to-day errands of living, I really needed a way to feel like I was still moving ahead and getting stuff done.

(4) Follow your muse(s). This is different from #2. When you work from a place of inspired action, you’re already inspired. You’re acting, you’re an agent of inspiration. You’re not looking outward for things, you are just creating, so to speak, from inside yourself when you decide to take a different walk today, or try a different restaurant, or take a spontaneous vacation because you’ve been getting really strong signals lately about all things Costa Rica. Following your muse, however, is about knowing what inspires you and staying in touch with it. It’s the place where you can go for your “fix.” A voice that reassures you, “yes, there’s a way out of this. You can get ahead. You’re doing it. Keep going.” Whatever you find yourself returning to over and over. Lately, for me, it’s great financial books. More generally, though, whenever I travel I get the feeling. It’s so easy to wake up at 4am. with enthusiasm for making it to the airport on time in order to head off to a place I haven’t been to yet. Another way to put this is to ask what will wake you up again when you’ve been sleeping for a while in your life? Have you seen the recent film Flawless starring Michael Caine and Demi Moore? Remember the scene where Laura Quinn is sitting at her office desk and reading the old “self-help” notes she wrote to herself? Coming across one of these reminders again when you’re feeling “stuck” can be the burst of energy you need.

But what about cashflow?

These are four ingredients that I know have worked for me. I’m sure there might be others. I am not sure about the place of cashflow in all of this. I don’t think that cashflow is merely a means to an end - i.e., just a way to be able to do the things you want. I think that in the beginning, increasing your cashflow can be much, much more beneficial than that. If you’re a student or anyone else living below the poverty line, for example, boosting your cashflow can help you make significant advances with your life and your energy. If you’re a multimillionaire and you’ve pretty well got the basics of what you need to be happy, more cashflow isn’t going to be as beneficial (unless you’re operating a vast charity network, or something similar).

I wonder if this all sounds very vague or if it creates any new connections for any reader. We’ve all read some of the same inspirational texts and have shared many of the same experiences, no doubt. I think that the next thing to do is to bring them altogether and work on synthesis and synergy. Oftentimes, progress in my own thinking occurs when I’m able to see two things side by side that were previously known only in isolation. So I’m going to try to work harder at that here, too, and draw more bits together that were previously left in scattered array.

OK, enough abstract talk! Let’s get back to what’s happening with the commodities market and whether we’ve really hit the bottom yet. When’s the best time to get back into financials!? (see?!: there’s a great example of two pieces in isolation (the abstract and the practical) - but I’ll be bringing them together more and more, too.) Leave me your comments, send me an email, and subscribe to my free feed - you can easily read it using Google.